This week I return with the writing files! Today, I post on something relevant to my current situation. I’m biting my nails that my editor (a.k.a. Mom) likes the book. While I wait in trepidation, I’d like to share some more writing tips with you:

You’ve finally done it. You’ve written a book! After a victory round of ice cream sundaes, you are ready to showcase your hard work to the world! But before you do that, there’s one tiny detail that you’ll have to acknowledge: your book isn’t perfect. This means you’ll have to edit it. Now come two choices: first, do you edit it yourself? Or do you trust another well-read person to edit it for you?

If you decide to edit it yourself, you’ll probably end up with a very bad book. This is mostly because, like many artists, you’re proud of your work and you might be unwilling to see flaws in it. An editor can find these without problem and they’ll also be happier than you to do so.

If you decide to let an editor edit it, you go the easier route. Now you don’t have to worry about your book turning out full of mistakes. What you do worry about is whether they’ll like it. Will they think it’s good? Will they make you start all over? Horror above horrors! This tends to be my attitude when someone edits something of mine, at least writing-wise.

While you may be anxious for others to read your work, at the same time, you don’t want them to find flaws. You want them to say the book is perfect! Sadly, I don’t know of many authors (for that matter, I don’t know of any) that had their first draft remain unchanged throughout the editing process. That’s not to say your editor is the big bad guy; it’s only to say that they’ll be looking at your book through different eyes. It’s best to respect that.

That’s all for today, but I’d like to hear from you. How do you handle proofreading?